One Of Two Farms As Steel Plant Site

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30273, 12 April 1965, Page 1

One Of Two Farms As Steel Plant Site

- , (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 11. The site of the steel plant for the £56 million iron and steel industry near Waiuku would be chosen this month, the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) said today. lhe choice of site for the New Zealand Steel Company’s proposed 100-acre plant had been narrowed down to two farming properties, he said.

Inquiries are now being made with the owners of both properties to find out their views on the sale.” Mr Marshall said negotiations to buy the land were being tarried out by Ministry’ of Works and Valuation Department ifficers.

It was hoped they •ould negotiate the lurchase without having to resort to the compulsory provisions of the Public Works Act which was available to the steel company.

“We would be most reluctant to invoke those provisions,” said Mr Marshall. “We are confident we can negotiate the sale.”

Enough land would be bought not only for the first stage and long-term develop ments, but also to ensure that a green belt surrounded the plant. Mr Marshall said he was confident there would be no smoke, fumes or noise nuisance from the plant. “We have firm and definite advice from our consultants that the plant planned will incorporate all the equipment necessary to ensure that there will be no nuisance,” he said.

“Normal farming operations in the district will not be affected at all. In fact, the land owned by the company which is npt needed immediately for development work will be continued to be farmed.”

Mr Marshall, with Sir Woolf Fisher, chairman of the provisional board of the steel company, visited the site of the ironsands deposits in the State forest area at Waikato north head this morning. He welcomed visiting delegates to the recent Commonwealth Mining and Metallurgical Congress in Wellington who have been inspecting mining and engineering works in the North Island.

Accompanied by officers of the D.S.I.R. and the Ministry of Works, the party of engineers saw outcrops of ironsands deposits and heard how the vasf quantities of water needed for the plant would be taken from the Waikato river.

IN CARACAS, police detained Mr Miguel Angel Capriles, the owner of Venezuela’s biggest chain of newspapers and magazines. Mr Capriles’s newspapers have been conducting an anti-Government campaign for some months and he was summoned to appear today before a congressional committee investigating some of his newspaper’s charges.

Mr Marshall, accompanied by senior officers from his department and the Treasury, had spent Saturday in consultation with the provisional board of the steel company and representatives of their consultants, McLellan and Partners and W. S. Atkins and Partners. “We have reached the stage now where action takes over from planning,” said Mr Marshall. “In the next few weeks the operating company will be established.”

The provisional board was now working on the basic decisions covering the site of the mill, the firm instructions to their consultants for detailed plans and specifications and the preparation of applications for tendc-s, and the appointment of certain key staff for the mill. More directors would soon he appointed and the company would then become a full legal entity. Mr Marshall returned by air to Wellington this afternoon.